


~ATH

by Budinca



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Existential Crisis, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Sadstuck, mental illness allusions maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Budinca/pseuds/Budinca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2 years are enough to make one look at his life and see nothing staring back at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first and probably the last Homestuck story I'll write.  
> Well, "story" is a bit much. I was just getting dumb matter out of my system.  
> It turned out a bit sad.  
> But it will be a short thing.  
> So I'll probably finish it in the next few days.

he wondered how many of them were going insane, for he was sure on his way there. he wondered if he was the only one who was bumping into flaws in their reality every single moment, as if this was a poorly recalled memory.

…he also wondered if he was the only one to take that possibility into view.

but then again, they have probably been mad all along anyway. in the end, where did the culture traits stop for the madness to begin? he didn’t like to think about it because, after all, they’ve been like this for thousands of years and if that wasn’t making a point of their fucked-up fate, he didn’t know what would. in perspective, the last one to argue their race’s mentality had been chained up and tortured to death. and that was still only one person, if his mutation even allowed him to be called that.

maybe he was the only one and he was entirely insane, for what fool could argue about their way of life when it was the only one they had ever known? that was right; he didn’t have the so-called recollections of a scratched race that lived in peace and harmony. hell, who would want that.

all he had ever been able to see in his dreams were fragments of historical carnages which would be longer of shorter depending on how  much care he took before falling asleep. and now he almost wished he had those dreams back. at least, then, he was asleep, not being hyper aware of his alternate selves being either stabbed to death right after they’ve opened their eyes or talked to death by people he never wished to know.

he wondered why nobody paid him any attention when he was so clearly out of his own mind. but then again, perhaps they didn’t see the need to, since there was nothing to do about it. they were so few of them alive at this point that starting to cull one another again would be classified as genocide.

they have never been assisted by other intelligent beings for so long in their entire lives and yet, none of them seemed affected by it. _he tossed another shoe in the corner of the room_. he couldn’t stand it, seeing people everywhere he went and them seeing him. this was too small a place to live in for all of three years. and yet, almost two years had passed already and he could barely even think of all of this ending one day. in all his days of pondering the situation, he had never come across a positive outcome.

did they even know where they were going? what if three years of travelling through a dying universe would, eventually, just land them in another patch of black nothingness, waiting for their own deaths? those of them who could still die, at least. _with a swift motion, he pushed all the computer bits around him to the same corner._

 _someone’s quiet steps came and went on the metal outside the door and he rubbed a dry hand over his face._   the _others_ were having it hard for radically other reasons. the perpetual darkness had awakened their longing for their sun and he couldn’t care less if he wasn’t so desperate for a sign of normality.

he didn’t like feeling like the weakest link as they looked at each other while having a schedules group conversation. he hadn’t even managed to kill one person during this nightmare and he didn’t understand why that made him feel so pathetic. he ought to understand, though. _his skin felt feverish. he threw all the trash in the room in a corner._ the only difference that still occurred on the place they were stuck in was one. a perpetual travelling between something they called awareness and reality and the other thing that was their recollections. for one, he felt more inclined to trust his memory’s realness than that of those rooms.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not capitalizing is harder than it should.  
> as in..2 more clicks harder than i expected.  
> oh.  
> KUDO! whoah

_lying face-up on the pile of trust and metal_ , he wondered why nobody was  outraged by how ridiculously this game was built. there were so many glitches and not only in their quests, but in the players’ minds too. how could no one have stopped to ask _why_ for so long. 

for the better part of it, they were swept right into its rules. even him. him more than some, since he never even thought about beating it. he, like many others, had been a mere pawn in a plan he still hadn’t figured out. not like it even mattered anymore. one more year and everything merely related to their session would cease to exist. except for them. theoretically.

 

for some time now, there was a feeling of movement in the air, but nobody knew whether it meant that they were slowing down or moving faster. or, if they knew, they couldn’t find it in their stone hearts to share the information. or maybe they had just encountered stormy weather within the universes.

he started getting out of his respiteblock less and less. it wasn’t like anything good could come out from him bumping into any person on that cursed meteor. he got used to not looking up anymore. there was nothing to see, either on the sky or their faces.

as the lasts months of their travel approached (if they’ve been pushed in the right direction, that was), he felt himself drawing even more into himself, like the air was too heavy, like the space was too wide and his turtleneck was getting bigger and bigger. he started pulling it over his knees now as he held them to his chest while watching a movie for the fourth of four thousandth time.

a sweep ago he used to wonder whether things would change once they got to the other universe and they met harley and egbert, but now he knew no such thing would happen. as a final proof of his actual, upcoming madness seeping slowly into his being, he had started checking trollian again, like if he stared at it long enough a new chum will light up. who would it be and why would he talk to that person, he did not know.

this was why he had better gone back to his romcoms and play dead for the rest of the world. the good kind of dead. not the one where he’d practice being a dick for an eternity of sweeps. he didn’t remember the last time he’d slept, only to be disrupted by the remembrances of faint horrorterrors. nowadays, he’d wake up more tired and angrier that he was when he fell asleep. he just wished for a non-dream bubble night.

they were like a dehydrated sailing crew under the noon sun. any point of light they thought they’ve seen was their finish line. that, until they got close enough to see it wasn’t.

he felt cold, but he knew it was just because of the shitty food they’ve managed to alchemize. it seemed that no amount of sweeps could make them better at conjuring a decent meal. the coffee was fucking disgusting as well, even for the humans, but it was the least disgusting of their barely comestible results. all in all, a part of his mind was wondering how they were going to fight in this state. but then again, when he’d last seen them, the others looked better than he was feeling, so maybe it was just him, yet again. fucking mutant.

he hadn’t seen gamzee in what lalonde explained as two years so, yeah, really nice working moirallegience there, karkat! maybe kanaya had killed him in secret.

at least terezi was doing better. he decided to take refuge in that.

 

as soon as they’ve entered, rather painfully, the new universe, they’ve been teleported into the veil, so they expected harley to appear one moment or the other. she didn’t make them wait long and they’ve been awkwardly meeting and catching up with each other for hours already. around halfway through it, he figured he won’t be missed much if he just went back to the silence of his respiteblock. he had nothing good to add to any of their stories anyway. one last movie before he would die on the battlefield. he was such a fucking romantic.

finishing one without the meteor being set on fire, he guessed he would start another one. it took someone no less than twenty minutes to finally disturb him. this was a fucking record. lucky him.

his door creaked and he didn’t bother to turn and look at the inconvenience, instead holding his knees to his chest tighter, textile brushing skin while his turtleneck covered most of him. he didn’t like the silence on the other side of the door anymore. he could not concentrate on the movie.

he heard a couple more muffled steps. “mind if i join?”

what more could he do than shrug and grumble unthreateningly?


End file.
